This week, Palestinian resistance forces launched one of the largest rocket barrages towards “Israel” in months, as Israeli occupation forces clashed again with Hamas fighters in a Gaza neighborhood they had previously overrun. This indicates the conflict risks turning into a prolonged war of attrition with fighters regrouping and rearming.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement claimed it launched rockets at southern Israel, which the Israeli military said were largely intercepted and caused no damage. The attack involved 20 projectiles from the Khan Younis area, where Israel conducted a months-long operation against militant groups that concluded in early April.
The Wall Street Journal reported that this barrage underscored the challenge Israel faces in its campaign against an insurgency of militants who retain the capability to launch rockets and mortar shells nearly nine months into Israel’s campaign to destroy them.
In a speech on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “We are approaching the end of the phase of destroying Hamas’ terrorist army, and we must target its remnants in the future,” indicating that Israel is preparing to transition to a new phase in the fighting.
Netanyahu added that he would not end the war without “complete victory” over Hamas, even though the Israeli military publicly stated last month that the complete destruction of the group is an unachievable goal.
The Israeli military’s invasion of the Shuja’iyya neighborhood in Gaza City, which began last week and caused Palestinian families to flee for their lives, highlights the difficulty Israel faces in achieving the war objective announced by the Israeli government: eradicating Hamas from the Gaza Strip.
The operation in Shuja’iyya is the latest in a series of raids where the Israeli military had to return to areas it had previously withdrawn from because Hamas had reorganized and regained some control.
Hamas says it is fighting in Shuja’iyya; the movement released a video on Sunday claiming to show its forces firing mortar shells at Israeli forces in the area.
The Israeli military has returned to several areas it had previously overrun in Gaza, including Jabalia in the north of the strip and Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa, which the army claimed was a Hamas command and control center. Security analysts say Israel risks getting caught in a long-term conflict with Hamas, which has shown its ability to survive as a rebel group, relying on some support from a broader audience in Gaza.
“It’s a stalemate. It’s going to be a low-intensity conflict for a long time,” said Joost Hiltermann, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the International Crisis Group.
Hiltermann added: “You can use military operations to push Hamas into different pockets in Gaza, but in the end, they’ll come back through the tunnel system or above ground. They are recruiting new fighters every day, including young people who have lost their families.”
After Monday morning’s rocket barrage, the Israeli military issued a warning for Palestinian civilians to leave a large area in southern Gaza, including parts of Khan Younis and Rafah, which could indicate additional Israeli operations in areas the military controlled earlier in the war.
Although Hamas’ military capabilities have been reduced by the Israeli assault, the group has demonstrated a persistent ability to attack Israeli forces, often operating in small groups of fighters and using hit-and-run tactics typical of insurgents. The military wing of the organization also possesses large stockpiles of weapons, according to a U.S. intelligence assessment reported by the Wall Street Journal.
A separate, public assessment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in February stated that Israel is likely to face “sustained armed resistance from Hamas for years to come.”
Israel says it is currently working to choke off Hamas’ ability to smuggle additional weapons into the Gaza Strip after Israeli forces took control of Gaza’s border with Egypt.
Fighting in Shuja’iyya, a large neighborhood in Gaza City that Israel overran earlier in the war, comes as Israeli military officials indicate they are nearing the end of major combat operations in Rafah, in southern Gaza, which Israel said was Hamas’ last stronghold.
Netanyahu has said in recent months that the Rafah operation was necessary to achieve his vision of complete victory. After Rafah, the military is expected to move to a new phase of less intense combat consisting of intelligence-based raids.
Israel invaded northern Gaza in response to Hamas attacks on October 7 in southern Israel, which killed 1,200 Israelis, most of them civilians, and led to around 250 people being taken hostage, according to Israeli authorities.
The war in Gaza has resulted in the deaths of more than 37,000 Palestinians, according to Palestinian authority figures, which do not specify the number of fighters. Israeli bombardment has turned much of the Gaza Strip into rubble.
A senior military official told the newspaper that the operation in Shuja’iyya was aimed at preventing Hamas from regrouping there. The Israeli military said that dozens of militants had been killed so far in Shuja’iyya and that it had found weapons, raided booby-trapped compounds, and dismantled weapon storage and manufacturing facilities.
The official, speaking from within Shuja’iyya, said: “We will maneuver repeatedly whenever we see an attempt to regroup, attempt to re-establish rule, or attempt to bring in any kind of weapon.”
Hamas is trying to attack Israel from there by firing mortar shells and rockets from above ground and from underground through attack tunnels, the official added: “We will not allow that to happen.”
The official said that the latest raid was based on intelligence and added: “I wouldn’t go in if I didn’t have information.”
The Israeli military stated that it aims to eliminate tunnels, especially those that can be used to launch attacks inside Israel, and above-ground compounds that Hamas controls in Shuja’iyya. On Monday, the Israeli military announced the destruction of a one-kilometer-long tunnel in central Gaza.
The current Israeli raid on Gaza City has returned Israeli forces to areas of the strip that were largely destroyed in the initial invasion and bombing campaign last year. In October, the military urged more than a million people in northern Gaza to leave their homes, leading to a mass exodus to the southern end of the strip, although some remained in the north.
Mohammed Assaf, a father of four, said he and his family fled Shuja’iyya hours after airstrikes targeted an area near their building on Friday. “We were told that the advancing tanks of the last few days were coming, so we fled with just the clothes we were wearing. My biggest dream now is to get water for my family,” he said.
Assaf and his family, like others fleeing Shuja’iyya, went to the western areas of Gaza City, such as the Rimal neighborhood, a once-affluent part of Gaza City that is now largely destroyed.
On June 27, the Israeli military issued warnings urging Palestinians in eastern Gaza City to leave for their safety. On that day, between 60,000 and 80,000 people were displaced from areas in the east and northeast of Gaza City, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Shuja’iyya has witnessed heavy fighting earlier in the war and was the site of one of the deadliest incidents for Israel when nine soldiers were killed in December in an ambush by militants. Hostages were also held in the area. On December 15, Israeli forces mistakenly shot and killed three hostages there, believing they were militants.
The Israeli military says it has killed about 14,000 militants in Gaza, around half the number of Hamas fighters believed to be operating in Gaza at the start of the war, but Hamas is still able to recruit fighters.
Military analysts say Hamas has been moving its armed forces from place to place, often avoiding direct engagement with the Israeli army to survive and wage a guerrilla warfare campaign.
“I don’t think Hamas is looking for a major, wide-ranging battle with all their forces in the field waiting for us to finish them off. They are moving and avoiding contact in the broad sense because they are trying to preserve strength,” said retired Israeli General Assaf Orion.
